Kajaani – The digital heart of Finland

The City of Kajaani’s growing ICT business expanded ten years ago into the datacentre industry, which is now one of the City’s main strengths.

Kajaani is the capital of the Kainuu region and a centre of expertise and commerce. The city boasts a long history in the forest industry, which has been transformed over time into modern bioprocessing. The forest industry also gave rise to Kajaani’s expertise in measurement technology, with products that are renowned worldwide. The City’s growing ICT business expanded ten years ago into the datacentre industry, which is now one of the City’s strongest business sectors. The game enterprise group, born of Kajaani University of Applied Sciences’ degree education in this sector, is the city’s latest business opening.

The City of Kajaani promotes culture, recreational activities and a pleasant and safe urban environment making it an attractive place to live. It offers high quality nurseries, day care centres, schools and hospitals and it provides a wide-range of educational and health care services covering all needs. The boreal forests surrounding the city create a unique feel to the city. A recreational bonus is Finland’s largest year-round leisure centre complete with spa facilities, golf courses, down-hill skiing slopes and cross-country ski tracks, located just half an hour away in the Vuokatti area.

According to the Director of Kajaani City, Jari Tolonen, “The recognition that Kajaani University of Applied Sciences and Herman IT have received in global datacentre circles indicates that Kajaani possesses top quality expertise in this field. Together with CSC Oy Finland’s IT Centre for Science, the university of applied sciences and Herman IT form the foundation of Kajaani DC’s ecosystem, on top of which pioneering data industry work is being built. The City of Kajaani has supported the birth of new expertise in data analytics and machine learning among operators in this ecosystem. The next step will see a move from data to artificial intelligence. In addition to innovation environment development support, the City corporation will operate in accordance with its strategy as a joint developer and development platform for new service solutions and will open up its own data for use.”

Datacentre education in Kajaani has received praise nationally and internationally

Kajaani University of Applied Sciences serves the regions’ development needs in the fields wellbeing, technology and communication, and tourism. It promotes the region’s opportunities to become a top-quality expert in selected sectors: activity tourism, nursing and health care, business and enterprise, as well as the ICT industry and mechanical and mining engineering.

The learning environment offered by KAMK’s Datacentre solutions education programme is unique in Europe. The students work in their very own datacentre, which they control and maintain. KAMK, Herman IT and CSC Oy Finland’s IT Centre for Science are working together to train datacentre experts.

“Our long-term, high-quality work as a datacentre education developer has been noticed not only by Finnish partners in cooperation and industry but also internationally.” Says President and CEO of Kajaani University of Applied Sciences, Matti Sarén. “Datacentre expertise creates Finland’s best platform for developing expertise in digital services, data leadership, and the application of artificial intelligence in education and our company-based initiatives. We will continue to focus our efforts in these areas in addition to our already renowned game production degree education”, Sarén continues.

The formidable Kainuu Datacentre ecosystem

Kajaani’s datacentre activities are supported by infrastructure and a sound ecosystem leftover from the paper mill that is ready for extension in the Renforsin Ranta business park. A large network of cooperation partners forms the backdrop to Northern datacentre activities. The City of Kajaani, the Loiste energy company, Kajaani University of Applied Sciences, Kainuun liitto the Regional Council of Kainuu, Kainuun Etu Oy Regional Development Company, Herman IT, CSC Oy Finland’s IT Centre for Science as well as many other companies and communities nearby are working together to promote datacentre activities in the Kainuu region.

Kajaani currently has two datacentre organisations operating in Kajaani, Herman IT and the Finnish state’s IT Centre for Science CSC Oy. Herman IT offers high usability datacentre and private cloud services and digital service software development. In addition to its own Finnish datacentre, Herman IT can fulfil the datacentre needs of companies operating abroad through a strategic partnership with the Austrian company, Anexia. This service gives Finnish companies access to global cloud locations with just a single contract and contract.

Northeast passage cable initiative

Kainuu is ideally situated between the East and West along the digital highway. This is why the Arctic Connect initiative, prepared by Cinia, would be crucially important to Kajaani. The aim of the project is to find opportunities for building a digital bridge between Europe and Asia via the Northeast passage. If successful, the Arctic Connect initiative would link three continents in which resides 85 percent of the world’s population. Northern Finland and Kainuu would subsequently be, looking from Asia, at the end of the first digital highway. The Arctic Connect initiative would also bring new data business and jobs to the Kainuu region.

“Rovaniemi and Kajaani will become important connection points along these routes and their attractiveness for example as datacentre locations will grow with new route alternatives”, the Regional Mayor, Pentti Malinen stated in a news bulletin in March.

Link to news published in the City of Kajaani website: http://www.kajaani.fi/fi/tiedote/kajaani-suomen-digitaalinen-sydan